Destination
by Duskie
Summary: One difference in his past will change the man he becomes and the life he wants to live. The question is, is Gohan still innately the same person. How could the ripples from this one event change everyone else’s destination.


Yep it's true I never owned DBZ. But if you wish to hold a tournament for the ownership of Gohan I will compete and I will, KICK YOUR ASS!

Warnings: Angst, maybe/Imminent character death/ other.

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Destination

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Life hadn't been easy for Gohan after his father decided not to return. It hadn't been easy for any of them. Bulma and Krillin had lost their oldest and best life-long friend. And Chichi had been left a single mother.

A single mother madly in love with a dead man. She had been furious. How dare he choose to stay in other world, abandoning her like this? At the grand age of eleven, Gohan hadn't completely understood all the other meanings of his father choosing to live elsewhere. At least, not at first.

Chichi was personally very financially secure. She was a princess with a lot of land which her father had given her when she had married. She had the rent she received from all the people who lived on her land. Then she was also managing Goku's land which he had inherited from his father, Gohan. It had taken her a lot of years to track down the deeds for Grandfather Gohan's land. So, once she was a full-time widow, that is what she did with her spare time. She enhanced her previous endeavours as a business woman, managing her vast amounts of land.

Or, at least, she did for the last eight months before her death. It was the most traumatic days of twelve year old Gohan's life. He had learnt to survive the hard way in the wild, got beaten almost to death by his mentor, watched friends get disintegrated, left his father on a planet to die and then got his father killed. Yet the worst time of all was his mother dying.

Not long after his father declined to live with them, Chichi had realized that she was pregnant. As all good women do and so as not to tempt fate, She waited four months before telling anyone. Then she was a pregnant widow raising a child on her own. She then had to convince Bulma that she could look after both herself and Gohan on her own, all the way out in the 439 mountain area(1). Yes, Bulma, Even pregnant.

But, as said, she kept her time occupied and tried to hide her broken heart.

Chichi was thirty-six weeks pregnant and packing her and Gohan's bags to leave for Capsule Corp. It was early afternoon on a Thursday. They were going to stay with the Briefs until the birth. She had decided on the name 'Goten'. It meant Heaven(2).

Suddenly she was wracked with pain. All night Gohan tried to convince her that she should let him fly her to the city. But she stubbornly refused. She had done this once and she could do it again. So it was that Gohan helped his brother be born. He was so small and cute. He had a small mop of wispy black hair and, unlike many human babies, he was born with black eyes and a tiny brown tail that wrapped around his mothers hand as she held him.

Gohan finally relaxed and continued doing as his mother ordered. She was demanding food and other such things.

She wasn't feeling very well and her legs had started aching some hours after the birth. Gohan had called Bulma and told her of the birth. Bulma would be there in a few days and yes she would ring everyone and tell them the fabulous news. Gohan virtually had to confiscate the phone. Chichi had assured her that her Gohan was taking good care of everything. She was fine just a bit sore and tired.

By the next evening she had a massive rash and had been sick multiple times. But still Chichi insisted that she was fine. It was almost midnight Friday when Gohan refused to listen to his mother's protests. She was feverish and was no longer giving rational arguments. So, for what was one of the first times(3) in Gohan's life, he went directly against Chichi's orders.

He wrapped and bundled her, then the baby, the best his untrained twelve year old hands could. He picked her up then called Nimbus. Placing her gently on Nimbus, he directed it to what was now Satan city and the closest reasonable hospital that he knew of. Then ran back in and grabbed the baby.

It was a long painful flight to what was once Orange Star city. He was sitting on Nimbus holding his mother and day-old baby brother the best he could. For the first forty-five minutes, the pain was caused by the screeched demands upon his sensitive Saiyan ears that he take her back this instant and forget this madness. She was fine; she had just given birth; she wasn't meant to be up to full steam. The next twenty minutes the pain came from the absolute silence as Gohan fretted over whether or not he could leave the baby with Nimbus on his own and fly ahead. But he knew he couldn't. Nimbus may be intelligent but he didn't understand the care that had to be taken with a new-born human baby.

His salvation, so to speak, came twenty minutes after his mother had fallen unconscious. Out of the dark, Vegeta arrived. Nimbus came to a halt and Vegeta stopped, floating almost ten feet away, barely visible in the complete dark that the nights had been since the loss of the moon.  
"Something was wrong." Gohan looked down, then back up to Vegeta's eyes, "I didn't know what to do, I was taking her to the hospital." Vegeta floated forward but was halted by a deep resinating growl and a flash of tooth, something he had never expected to hear from the half human. It was abruptly cut off. Then Gohan continued in the same lost voice as before. "Should I take her to the hospital?" lowering his eyes again

Vegeta paused unsure what to do himself. "Hand me the baby and take her as fast as you can to the hospital. I will bring your brother after you." Vegeta again went to float forward but was halted by the same growl. "I will bring him straight after. You need to hurry", Vegeta repeated in a low tone.  
This time, as he moved forward more cautiously, Gohan didn't move an inch until Vegeta had the baby firmly in his arms. Finally, Gohan looked up to Vegeta's face again and then he was gone.

Vegeta didn't bother trying to remove the boy's mother from his arms. He knew he'd just cause more damage with the level of distress in the young Saiyan. Just past one in the morning, Gohan finally made it thorough the front doors of the emergency ward and in tears demanded that someone help his mother. He could hardly explain that his mother had just given birth.

He stood in front of the triage station, too low to be imposing. "um.. please, I, she." The nurse looked vaguely interested. Chichi in Gohan's arms was to low to be visible.

"Hi, ya, sweetheart. Can I help you with something?"  
Gohan nodded "She, she,…..HELP," he yelled in distress, still unable to form sentences.

At his yell the nurse jumped up and finally saw the extremely pale, unconscious, shaking woman in his arms.

"Doctor" she yelled as she ran around the desk and ushered him into an office, where they proceeded to question him and poke and prod her.

"Sweety, what happened?"

"She was fine," Gohan said. "She said she was fine." She didn't want to go to hospital. "She's going to be so cranky with me. Is she going to be ok?"

"Sweety, what happened?"

"She was fine, after the birth and most of the morning and then she got sick and stopped making sense, so I brought her here. Is she going to be ok now? You can fix her, right?"

It was twenty minutes later that Vegeta arrived with the Baby. Gohan met him at the front of the hospital and took Goten.

They put her on an intravenous drip and antibiotics and gave her a bed, then told Gohan that all they could do was wait and see. Hopefully he had got her here in time.

The doctors made the assumption that Vegeta was the husband, He didn't dissuade them from it, he just never confirmed it. He walked straight past them and proceeded to a public phone where he reverse-dialled (4) Bulma.

Gohan had gone straight back to his mother with the baby. It was ten minutes later that Chichi momentarily stirred. Looking over at her was Gohan in a strange room holding her newborn son. She wasn't sure what was going on but they looked wonderful together even as they focused in and out. Except her Gohan was crying and she didn't know why. And she had to comfort him. Yet again, she was cranky at Goku and not just for his betrayal of her.

Leaning forward, she caught his hand that already held her other. His head was laying next to their now entwined hands, he was staring at her. She rasped words that would only ever be heard by her sons and only remembered by her elder. But in the following days, it would give Gohan the strength he needed: the eternal knowledge that he was loved and that she would never leave him.

When Bulma arrived twenty minutes later she was out again, and still at two-thirty when Krillin and 18 arrived. By four her father was there. At five her hands tightened around Gohan's and her breathing slowed.

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(1) - This is where they live, right?  
(2) – feel free to correct me.  
(3) – If it isn't and he has specifically done otherwise before, please tell me and I shall reword my statement.  
(4) – I just can't see Vegeta carrying things in his pockets, let alone loose change, can you? No, no, I can see him carrying a tazer for fun; and loose change through an airport for the sake of picking fights with security guards.

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Distribution: Knock yourselves out, just tell me.  
Feedback: Duh, I expect full payment from you. Yes you. Person reading this. In the form of feedback! Wait, wait take your mouse away from that back button – Feedback, Feedback! You want me to update, right? bight glassy eyes (that is commonly called an ultimatum)  
Category: Adventure/ Fluff/ Romance?/ general/ comedy – really depends on if he falls in love. 

AUTHOR RAMBLES: I really wanted to spell Vegeta, Vejita and 18 in Romaji but didn't think I could justify it since I was calling everyone else with their dub names. I also couldn't figure out which romaji I wanted to use for 18. least I just call her 'Ju-Hachi'. I also know there was also another spelling for Saiyan I preferred. And this is the pointless knowledge that you find you've lost when you drop a fandom, come back years later and just randomly start writing.

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Ok, people reading this. I have no idea what I'm doing, only a vague one as to where I'm going and very vague pieces of plot I know I'm going to include. So if you have suggestions or requests I promise nothing and may ignore you. Or I may pounce and proposition.  
Flame me, review me or unexpected betaaing I don't mind. I just appreciate.  
Love Duskie. 


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